About the production

Reviews responded positively to Bergman's psychological skill as a playwright and his 'unscrupulous' dramatic dialogue but felt that his plot structure revealed 'artistic helplessness', and a tendency to take facile shortcuts by moving the conflict to an abstract level.

Sources

The reviews were mainly discussing Bergman's ability as a director versus his inability as an author. Ebbe Linde in BLM for example wrote:

Once before I have voiced the opinion that the director Bergman is fatal for the author Bergman through this tendency to freely maximise all the effects without considering the dramatic structure of the play. Bergman possesses rich expressive means which are sabotaged by his superficial skillfulness.

One of the few defending the dramatist Bergman was Herbert Grevenius, who apreciated Bergman's 'elegant and secure' way of writing.

The Day Ends Early is termed a morality play in three acts. The play is set during midsummer's eve when the old woman Mrs Åström lets five people know that their days are numbered. Among them are Jenny, a business woman, Finger-Pella, a homosexual beauty operator and Peter, an actor who entertains the others with a puppet performance of Everyman. Mrs Åström's gloomy foreboding has a logical explanation; she is an hallucinating alcoholic who has escaped an institution. In the final scene her words though show to be true - the five are all dead and dwell in a great void.